Oct. 6, 2015
"I feel like if I didn't get adopted, I don't know how long I'd be alive, honestly," Raizes said. "No one knew how long they'd live for."
As a baby, David lived in the Kono region of Sierra Leone -- a diamond-rich district close to the Guinean and Liberian borders. Rebels wreaked havoc and chaos in the area to gain control of the highly profitable region.
David does not remember the first five years of his life. He said his brain blocks out the trauma as a coping mechanism.
Much of what his family knows of his early years is a result of conversations his father, Dr. Elliot Raizes, had with his son's former guardians on subsequent trips to Africa after David was adopted.
David was roughly 4 months old the day his mother handed him to an elderly couple standing in front of their home with the promise that she'd return for him. The Yarjahs assume she died as a result of the attacks because they never saw her again.
After a few days of caring for David, the Yarjahs' home was burned down by the rebels. With David in tow, the couple walked to Freetown -- more than 200 miles away -- where they had some family and the prospect of a safe environment.
The rebels showed up again a year later, once again leaving the Yarjahs' home destroyed in their wake. A makeshift community popped up just outside of Freetown. It was filled with people whose homes had been destroyed.
It was here, through conversation, that the Yarjahs learned about All As One, an organization that helps orphaned and abandoned children. As David's legal guardians they decided the toddler should be given the opportunity to be adopted and go to the United States.
"That's how his name ended up on the Internet," Elliot said.
Elliot Raizes and his wife, Beth, were living in Atlanta in 2000. An infectious disease physician, Elliot had spent the bulk of his career in the 1980s and 1990s dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He would come home to his wife and share what he learned in lectures he attended about the HIV-related orphans in Africa.
The parents of three children, the youngest then 12 years old, Elliot and Beth decided they should help the situation in Africa in a more personal way -- by adopting a boy and a girl. An Internet search led them to All As One and photos of David as well as his future sister, Fea.
After a delivery mishap sent adoption paperwork to Dublin, Ireland, instead of Dakar, Senegal, where David and Fea obtained their visas, Elliot took action. Four months after the day the Raizes family did their Internet search, Elliot boarded a plane to Africa for the first time to bring home their children.
"If you've ever talked to anyone who has done a foreign adoption, most people expect the process to take one to two years," Elliot said. "Four months felt like an eternity to us because for four months we felt like our children were being held hostage in another country. It's amazing how you can bring a child into your life and immediately love them."
With an arsenal of about 20 words of their native language in his back pocket, Elliott brought home David and Fea, then 5, to Atlanta.
The children were undernourished, healthy but extremely low on the growth curve. Rice was a staple in their diet. They were notorious for hoarding food in their early days until they learned food security was never going to be an issue in their new home.
"Just material things in general they would tend to hoard; even clothes," Elliot recalled. "They made an art of it. They would take all the clothes out of their drawers every day and put them in piles and compare the sizes of the piles."
Within three to four months David and Fea were speaking fluent English. They were enrolled in pre-school together and eventually attended kindergarten less than a year later.
"She's my best friend. She's always been there for me. We went through everything together. Middle school, high school, same friends," David said. "I think her being around made it a lot easier for me to cope with not having a (biological) family. I feel like if I was alone the entire time it would have been a much harder process over here to adjust."
In February 2002, a year and a half after adopting David and Fea, the Raizes family took in Fea's cousin, Satta. All three played on a co-ed soccer team together, although David was the only one who stuck with the sport.
A competitive streak has always lived within David. His father said within six months of his arrival to the States, he was beating his 12-year-old brother in video games.
"When we were in the car, he would get mad as cars would pass us because he thought we were racing the other cars," Elliot said. "Of course (his competitiveness) eventually went to the soccer field."
Now a sophomore on the men's soccer team, David has aspirations of a pro career. He is also interested in becoming a physician.
His family members have been the biggest supporters of his dreams.
Although some of his siblings are grown with kids of their own, they travel to sit in the stands at UCF when they can. They were there for this year's opening weekend to hear David's name called over the loud speaker during the starting lineup introductions.
"My parents are so caring and loving. Loving us, taking care of us all these years isn't easy," David said. "My family is a strange one. There are so many personalities because there are six kids, but I'm with a happy, loving family, so I'm happy."
Story by Jenna Marina; photos courtesy of the Raizes family